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Globally, large numbers of children and adolescents are displaced by armed conflict, which poses significant threats to their mental health, psychosocial well-being, and protection. Although humanitarian work to support mental health, psychosocial well-being, and protection has done considerable good, this paper analyzes how humanitarian action is limited by excessive reliance on a top-down approach. Although the focus is on settings of armed conflict, the analysis offered in this paper applies also to the wider array of humanitarian settings that spawn increasing numbers of refugees globally.

In most analyses of armed conflict, children are invisible and are typically regarded as passive, incidental victims or inconsequential actors. In current intrastate, ethno-political conflicts, however, children play an increasing role both as soldiers and, along with other non-combatants, as targets and victims in fighting at the community level. New evidence from the recently completed UN Study Impact of Armed Conflict on Children documents that significant numbers of children are soldiers in conflicts fought in the post-Cold War era. The increasing participation in political violence of children, many of whom have little schooling, job training, or other means of meeting their basic needs, presents profound obstacles to the construction of peace. Furthermore, current patterns of community-level fighting victimize children, enabling soldiering and the continuation of cycles of armed conflict. Peace research needs to examine the scale and consequences of children's involvement in armed conflict, and it also needs to develop an understanding of the wider psychosocial impact of armed conflict on children. Using the UN Study as a point of departure, this essay reviews current knowledge about the psychological impact of political violence on children, identifying key methodological and ethical challenges that confront research in this area. Recognizing that children comprise approximately half the population of war-torn countries, this essay also develops the theme that the construction of peace requires action research aimed at constructing culturally appropriate intervention and prevention efforts that assist children and families and that contribute to broader programs of post-conflict reconstruction and development.